October Surprise In March/April? Is the invisible hand of the Dark Powers working to install a Democrat House Majority before the November election?

Fox News reports that Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., chairman of the House select committee on China, is announcing he's leaving Congress on April 19, which, Elizabeth Elkind points out, will temporarily leave House Republicans with just a one-seat majority.

Causing Chad Pergram to ask: Could the Republicans' slim House majority slip away before November?

Have RINOs and/or NeverTrumpers decided that, instead of "boldly" voting with the Democrats, they would be more circumspect and just resign? And did they make such decisions interdependently or were they, like Stephen Breyer (and — to be fair — Anthony Kennedy), pressured/blackmailed/bribed into resigning behind closed doors ? (Thanks for the Instalinks, Steve and Sarah…)

This would seem to confirm the suspicious mind of one No Pasarán die-hard, one Damian Bennett, who has given a lot of thought into the matter, gathering the evidence in the process, leading him to pen this in the middle of the month:

It seemed innocuous. Preening anti-Trumper reading the writing on the wall takes a powder.

• Republican To Suddenly Leave Congress March 12, 2024
• Ken Buck Torches GOP After Declaring He’s Leaving Congress In Days March 12, 2024
  Representative Ken Buck, one of the few Republicans willing to call out his party’s ridiculous efforts to impeach Joe Biden, announced Tuesday that he will leave Congress in less than two weeks. ... Buck had announced in November that he would not seek reelection, but he indicated at the time that he would complete his current term. 
  

Oh! Oh! Oh! Noble Cassius departs the arena* because of the woeful civility of politics.

* For the lowest circle of Hell.

“I think this place [Congress] is dysfunctional. Instead of having decorum, instead of operating in a professional manner, this place has just devolved into this bickering and nonsense and not really doing the job for the American people.”

Here's a certainty, whatever the discomfort of his twisted civic panties, Buck's resigning removes him from "doing the job for the American people", at least the American people of Colorado's 4th district who elected him. 

Wait.

Report: 5 More Rinos Could Leave Congress To Give Dems Majority Before 2024 Election March 15, 2024

After Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., made a surprise announcement Tuesday that he will be leaving Congress by the end of next week, the RINO representative said more resignations could be coming down the pipeline. When asked by Axios about receiving criticism from colleagues over his decision to resign, Buck reportedly replied: “I think it’s the next three people that leave that they’re going to be worried about.”

Bucks’ imminent departure leaves the GOP with a two-seat majority in the House. Three more Republicans leaving would, of course, put the Democrats in charge.

Special elections for the vacated seats could, of course, maintain a Republican majority -- or not. (Expelling George Santos is looking like another GOP 'genius' move right now.)

So. [Loooooong heavy pause.] With DJT ineluctably ascendant and Biden electorally unsalvageable, what is the Democrats' Plan B? Is the invisible hand of the Dark Powers working to install a Democrat House Majority before the November election? A Democrat House Majority to dead-stop the Biden impeachment, to pass a law 'clarifying' the 14th Amendment barring DJT from the November ballot -- among other 'democracy' saving measures (e.g., warrantless monitoring of your phone, your bank account, your email, your browser history)? You tell me. 

The problem with the unimaginable is that it cannot be imagined. It can only arrive and stupefy.

Hate evil. Peace out.

Damian Bennett goes on to add:

Also see this, Don Bongino at 39'40''. The trick is to deny all candidates (DJT, RFK, Biden) 270 electoral votes and throw the election into the House, where each state delegation gets ONE vote. The winner must garner 26 votes. Supposing a 50-50 split I surmise that gives the deciding vote to Kamala Harris (as per the legislative process). Long-shot. Hail Mary, the Democrats come to Jesus.

The Dems are running out of options. Can they steal another election? Whatever, something is afoot.

 

Are Biden and Macron, in Addition to Numerous Other Policitians (Foreign as Well as American), Afflicted with Hatch Syndrome?

Today is Orrin Hatch's birthday. If still alive, he would turn 90 today. As luck would have it, one of No Pasarán's most veteran readers, an ex-DC lobbyist named Fred from the Beehive State, met his senator back in the day and, as we discussed France's president, he shares the following memories of the Utah politician. (Thanks for hatchin' an Instalink, Sarah…)

FYI, I've always thought of Macron as a lightweight, I do not follow him (at all) but I presume he is now severely afflicted with Hatch Syndrome.

I named this after Utah's Senator Hatch. I remember when he was first elected, [when] he first got to DC, he was a good senator, voting and talking pretty much the "right" way. As it happened, I dealt with him (a tiny bit) when I was tangentially involved with lobbying Congress in the late 1990s. I noticed a few things.

He had a very competent staff; they got things done. He was extremely self-important. He seemed to think he was always the smartest person in the room. He was very "tactful" in his language, always acting like he supported our position …

However, there was something wrong, I surmised, because he used good words, but it seemed he did not really know what he was talking about. I ultimately came to the conclusion that he had spent 20+ years surrounded by yes-men. "That is a good idea, Senator." "Brilliant, Senator." "Right, good thing to do, Senator." He likely had not been told he was wrong ... well, since the 1970s??

It creates, to over-state the case a tad, it creates an idiot. Hatch was not stupid. He still voted generally the "right" way, but (for example) then he rammed through the Disney-pushed extension of copyright law (we cannot let Steamboat Willie just fall into the public domain now, can we?). The result was he thought he was important enough (or something) and he ran for president. Talk about a joke, I mean, he might have made a better president than W turned out to be, but come on, my cat would have been better (I should say your cat, as I do not have a cat). Arrogant, self-important, all the worst case scenarios you can think of. They are all that way.

Sorry this is so long, but two more things. I contend that it is Hatch Syndrome that has Joe Biden, likely the stupidest president since, well, ever, challenging ordinary Americans to IQ tests. He would get walloped by at least 75% of the population, but he has no clue. (Oh, and this was true before senility set in.)

Also, I cannot really blame any of them for being this way. The entire Senate, and maybe most of the House, is populated by people who are this way, but what would you expect? How would you hold up to decades of nothing but sycophantic affirmation? It seems to me that 20+ years of that would turn anyone into a Hatch Syndrome victim.

[Granted, I may not blame them, but I do resent the fact that I constantly get victimized by them.] 

Many years later, Fred had another Hatch-and/or-his-staff encounter. (Incidentally, I once took the same underground tram between the Senate and the Capitol once, in the 1980s; I was seated in the same tiny carriage as Ted Kennedy and another man (perhaps Orrin Hatch?); all I had on me was one of those booklets with a dozen detachable DC postcards — I asked Teddy for an autograph — he grabbed my booklet and quickly signed one of the cards (at random); it turned out to be the one displaying the White House…)

Sorry, if you are still reading, I have another Hatch story. I went to DC maybe in the early 00s with a couple of kids [from] Jr. High I guess. Someone arranged a tour of the Capitol through Hatch's office. We go into the Senate Office Building and then downstairs to the little tram that runs over to the Capitol. I happened to be in the car with one of the staffers guiding the tour. We get to talking and he says something like "These tours are usually guided by unpaid staff, but I'm paid staff, Senator Hatch has plenty of staff." "Why does he have plenty of staff?" I ask. "Well, he got the extra staff when he was chair of the Judiciary Committee. He's no longer chair, but he got to keep the staff."

The country's in the very best of hands.

Presenting the Have-Fun-with-the-Instapundit-Ads Game

Four years ago, during the Covid scare/the Covid languor, I invented the Instapundit game.

The goal of [that] game is to read a post on Instapundit, while keeping the name of its author hidden below the bottom the screen. … What you have to do now is figure out, to the best of your ability, who is the author of the post! … [The] Instapundit game … should only be played, really, by veteran readers of the Glenn Reynolds blog … 

Now — on the occasion of No Pasarán's 20th anniversary — a second InstaPundit game has been created (yes, again, by moi), and it can be played by virtually anybody.

Not long ago mankind saw the dawn of the advent of advertisements on the Instapundit blog. The Blogfather explains:

SOME PEOPLE DON’T LIKE THE NEW ADS. Sorry, the problem is that InstaPundit has been demonetized by Google, for unspecified “dangerous” content [coupled with] the trend of cutting advertising to right-leaning sites …

Well, if you don't like the new ads, why not have fun with 'em? The goal of the game is to see if an advertisement can seem to apply to the text of a post below or above (or close to) it, in such a manner that the ad's photo or video could (almost) be taken to be an integral part of that post, deliberately chosen by the person posting. Then you do a (short) screen recording (a screenshot video? a video capture? a screencast?) — maybe 5 to 10 seconds — highlighting the sentence that is closest in soul to the ad.

Here are three ads leading to four or five examples…

(Incidentally, I do not know if the average reader is seeing the same ads as I, i.e., if ads are region-connected; I am based across the ocean in Paris, but the ads are in English, so I suppose it is more than possible that at least part of the time we are seeing the same ones…)

Maybe one day we can have the InstaOscars to see which entries are most deserving of an award…

And finally, to InstaPundit, thanks for the memories.

We couldn't have survived for twenty years without you…

DOB 2004: No Pasarán Turns 20

Twenty years ago, after enduring months of unceasing tirades of criticism, demonization, and venom from Europe (and especially France) linked to George W Bush's 2003 invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a handful of independent bloggers (Douglas, Jonathan, and Liminal aka U*2) made good on their vow to unite their efforts and create a single, common weblog, one by the name of No Pasarán! (I would join five weeks later, and N Joe (RIP) a year or two later.)

 

The blog's inaugural pledge was a tongue-in-cheek declaration that we

"will commentate on current events with all the psychotic calm and serenity of a Palestinian father who explains that he can't wait for his 2 surviving sons to become martyrs"

Of the more than 13,700 posts that have been written since 2004, I consider the following couple of posts to be two of the most important:

• The Era of the Drama Queens: Every Crisis Is a Triumph

• The Leftist Worldview in a Nutshell: A world of Deserving Dreamers Vs. Despicable Deplorables

In addition, there is this guest piece that I posted on American Thinker earlier this year:

• Let's Stop Using the Words "Trump Tried to Overturn the 2020 Election" (It's Unprofessional Journalism)

Thanks to blogs like Instapundit — without which we would hardly have survived this long…

Speaking of which —
And now for something completely different:
Presenting the Have-Fun-with-the-Instapundit-Ads Game